Cuckoo and Mockingbird
by infinitelystrangemachine
Summary: When trouble comes knocking, it always seems to find them together. Origins, bits, and pieces - for a clearer picture. Levi x Petra / Rivetra (rated for violence and intense themes)
1. The Contact Call and the Ascension I

_Friction - Imagine Dragons  
The Time to Run - Dexter Britain_

 _-|somewhere around the time when they first meet, a year or more before the fall of Wall Maria|-_

* * *

 **The Contact Call and the Ascension  
** I

There are more of them than what the reports had suggested.

"Ral."

The very tallest buildings in the abandoned town still do nothing to cloak the sheer _magnitude_ of them - ten meters, fourteen meters, hulking and too large for this world and so weirdly, unnaturally _fast_ for their size - the crowns of the heads of the smaller classes bobbing just above dilapidated shingles, _so many_ of them -

And she wonders what it was like when the hour of reckoning for this place struck, this place where the buildings aren't quite tall enough, where all a Titan had to do was cock its head just so and it would see you whole blocks away, clear as day, nowhere to run, and Petra sees where entire buildings were smashed through long ago. Flimsy obstacles to the only beings on Earth higher than her on the food chain.

"Ral?"

And now she's shaking in her boots, because the train of death and horror before them is what's standing between her and the safety of the advance party, where fresh horses and fuel await, if anybody even survived the night -

And she's doubting, she's _doubting_ \- one misstep could put her leg clean through a rotted section of roof, and the greatest of the classes loom so _high_ above her, could her gear tackle that kind of angle, could she even swoop down on the nape of one exposed neck without three other monsters snapping her out of the air first, _had she just watched her final sunrise this morning_ -

A wiry hand clamps down on her shoulder, nearly jolting her into a chimney. " _Petra_."

With her jaws mortared shut, she looks to her right. The hand on her shoulder is thin and white-knuckled, the grip strong enough to bruise. Captain Levi's sidelong leer is blunt-force rather than piercing, icy against sunstruck skin.

"Breathe," he says.

 _Easy for you to say_ , Petra's mind spits, because it's suddenly hard to.

It's the Titans, she reminds herself. She's afraid.

She's _paralyzed_.

"There's more than -" Her voice cracks, she swallows down bitter bile, huffs out an equally bitter-tasting breath. "There shouldn't be this many."

And, just a bit, she cringes away from him next to her, like he's a couple heads taller than he really is, like she's fully expecting a reprimand for her fear.

When none comes, she peeks, and -

No one, she knows, is going to believe this. She scarcely believes it herself.

The barest hint of a smirk pulls at one cheek. His hand fists in her soft green cloak and he shakes her once, slow and heavy. "Not backing out on me, are you, Corporal?"

She's quick to erase the surprise from her face, and his smirk deepens infinitesimally.

He already knows.

"Of course not, sir," she says stiffly, and faces forward, hands dropping to the handles of her blades at her hip.

In his voice, she can hear how the look on his face must vanish. "Good." The hand drops from her shoulder, leaving it prickling and half-numb. "And you're right; the number of targets was unanticipated. The rest of the patrol is deliberating." With the bracing ring of metal, he draws his blades next to her, and she's quick to follow suit, stomach tightening. One of his arms appears in the edge of her line of vision, pointing with his sword at a still-distant fourteen-meter class. "See him?"

"Yes, sir."

"We get him first. Tall ones are priority, so nothing can swoop in on us from above in the middle of a maneuver."

"Understood, sir."

"The short ones are still fast, and they like to surge up on you from below. So no elevation much below the nape unless you're on a roof."

"Yes, sir." She can feel herself growing impatient now. Everything he's saying has already been drilled permanently into the grooves in her brain by her instructors since the day she'd begun her training.

Is he belittling her?

He huffs a sigh into the wind, and she watches it take his cloak and fling it over his right arm, ruffling his hair, exposing where it grows shorn and bristling along the curve of the underside of his skull. "These cowards. We're gonna give them a show, all right? We're gonna be point."

Her brows scrunch together. "Sir?"

He meets her eyes again, gaze as dull and dead as the northern icefields of legend. "Protect my flank. Do exactly as I say. And you'll be fine."

She swallows.

"Hmph. Your brain still on the moon?"

"No, sir."

"Then you're ready." He whirls the blades in his hands. "Protect my flank. Give 'em hell."

And he tilts into a full sprint, his lines bursting from their confines, and Petra rocks forward and peels off after him just as the soles of his feet part company with the roof, and -

\- for a split second -

\- his cloak snaps in his wake, silver wings unfurling -

\- and he's gone, grappling hooks fixing in the chimney across the street, jerking his waist forward, and he curls into the pull, back arched like a springing cat, hurtling through the air. Petra's hooks find a rise in the roof meters to his left, and she leaps, then relaxes into the whipcrack yank on her hips, and she's airborne, arms out, chin tipped back.

She lets her eyes rake over the sky - pale blue, begging to be touched - and then she grits her teeth and forces her face forward to spot her landing.

Racing to meet her probable death at the jaws of Titans - she's relieved. Compared to sharing a roof with Captain Levi, she's calm as a summer's morning.


	2. The Contact Call and the Ascension II

_The Arena - Lindsey Stirling  
Battle Cry - Imagine Dragons_

 _-|directly after The Contact Call and the Ascension I|-_

* * *

 **The Contact Call and the Ascension  
** II

Too many have fallen.

His hooks jerk hard at his hips as they slam deep into the skull of the ten-meter class. The six-meter with the stupid grin is closing in like a cannon-shot from the right, so he throws himself over his right shoulder just as his canister of compressed air deploys, and the world heels a thousand times over, spinning him shoulder over hip tight as a razor -

\- monstrous jaws snap with the sound of splitting rock not half a meter below him, and he kicks hard, the soles of his feet slamming in the crown of the beast's head, and he springs, puts on another punch of gas, and the ten-meter is rocketing toward him, turning with ludicrous slowness at his approach - his shoulders tightening at the zero of his swing, hands turning to marble on the hilts of his swords -

\- his entire body snaps like a whip, blades scissoring together, dragging through the resistance of Titan flesh -

\- he's clear within the next moment, leaving the thing to fall beneath him, letting gravity snatch at him at the zenith of his rise, which is exactly when his lines return, thudding gently into their confines at his hips once again.

He kicks to turn in midair, launches his lines, hooks a roof. A quick breath gasps into his lungs before the 3D Maneuver Gear can snatch it away.

And the six-meter class comes hurtling in for round two, careening into buildings, wrecking the street at its feet in its frenzy to get to him.

He doesn't even have the time to curse, much less to retract his lines and try another, faster angle; he releases compressed air in a frantic rush and pain lacerates his lower spine as he's snatched much too fast towards the roof, tucking in his legs and crossing his swords in front of him, letting himself tilt in a dizzying corkscrew around the lines as he hears the Titan put on a burst of speed and close in -

" _Captain Levi!_ "

His boots strike the roof hard enough to shatter the tiles under him, he sprawls gracelessly on the tilt, rolls over, throws his cloak aside, and is in time to see the six-meter's ridiculous, grinning mouth yawn open for him just as Petra Ral comes streaking down upon it with the speed and precision of an eagle dropping into a dive. Unleashing a furious cry, she hauls her swords to one side and throws her whole self into a massive strike.

Gore sprays. It's strange how the light never leaves their eyes. Levi leers into its uncomprehending, runny, empty orifices, each one easily larger than his whole head, when bare meters from him, the Titan's severed neck muscles make its head careen at a weird angle. The tongue lolls. Its feet fly out from under it. Levi sucks in air through his teeth in realization and leaps to one end of the roof just in time for the monster to crash lifelessly, head-long into the building wall. Windows pop and shatter, wood and plaster flies; Levi shields his face, feet wide apart as the impact thrashes through him. The monster sinks halfway down through the building before it stops, draped crookedly, limbs askew, feet still dragging in the street, and thick vapor rises slowly into the air.

Levi stares, breathing hard through clenched teeth. He hears the dry rushing sound of fuel just before Petra's grappling hooks shoot into the roof tiles a meter to his right, and she comes flying to his side. Time folds for an instant, drags with deliberate slowness. Her pale hair fans out around her, swirling in her change of angle; her face screwed into a hard grimace, Titan blood - he hopes it's Titan blood - smeared in a thick line across her cheek and neck. Then her feet are reaching out for the roof and she hits too hard, knees buckling; she collapses and curls to one side with a grunt.

"Corporal." He picks his way around the building's own rubble to get to her and crouches down as she sits up with a groan. "Are you hurt?"

"Should be asking yourself that," she bites out, straightening her spine with an ominous crack. She sighs and rolls her neck gingerly, letting her feet slide down the roof's tilt below her. "No, sir, I'm okay. Just not as graceful as you."

"Don't get too excited," he intones dryly, standing. "I flattened myself on this roof same as you."

At his side, Petra gets to her feet too. They watch a pair of short, squat Titans stumble down the cross-street a kilometer away, disappearing quickly behind buildings. The thin mist of Titan vapor muffles the air. They strive valiantly to not look at the mangled corpses strewn everywhere their eyes fall, variously positioned, evenly spaced.

There's time for that later.

"How much farther to the advance party?" Petra asks, her voice tight.

Levi raises his eyebrows at her, catches another glimpse of how bloodied and disheveled she is, how her eyes are still open a bit too wide and remind him of prey cornered in back alleys. He stops himself before wry words leave his tongue.

"Doesn't matter. We need to clear every single Titan out of here first, or else we'll just be leading them straight to a feast."

"How many scouts are left to us, Captain?"

Levi pulls his brows down even further over his eyes, surveying the rooftops all around them.

"Enough," he says shortly, and launches his lines before she can ask another question. "Just follow me."

"Yes, sir!"

They whip through the air, springing off of roofs, sprinting hard to head off the two four-meters they'd seen earlier. Levi hopes vaguely that, with these two, their work here will be done.

Because he's pretty sure that he and Petra are all that's left.


	3. The Contact Call and the Ascension III

_Breathe Me - Sia_  
 _Kolnidur - Jónsi_

 _-|a prequel - takes place directly before The Contact Call and the Ascension I|-_

 _/_ _Author's note: I'm altering the timeline of the story a bit so that this group of chapters takes place probably a year or more before the fall of Wall Maria, when Levi and Petra are a lot younger. Neither of them have been out of training all that long. So some edits have been done on Chapter 1 to fit the timeline._

* * *

 **The Contact Call and the Ascension  
** III

He does not, he _does not_ , panic.

At this point in his career, there's a part of him that's pretty sure he _can't_.

"Captain!" the nearest scout wheezes, his hands shaking hard enough to rattle his swords. "Orders, Captain!"

"Calm down," Levi snaps, staring steadily ahead. "Hold your ground, soldiers."

The ground doesn't just rumble.

It _boils_.

Levi sighs, bored.

The ten- to fourteen-meter classes are in the lead, slashing at the earth with their longer legs. Levi, the other squad leaders, and their scouts stand between the oncoming horde and the advance party somewhere some kilometers beyond the town, but -

"They're fast," gasps the soldier, scared stupid. "There's too many of us in one place; we've drawn them in huge numbers!"

"More like the advance party did," Levi mutters, clicking his tongue. "Lazy, noisy brats."

They have fifteen seconds, Levi figures. The grotesque face of the tallest, foremost monster is already clear, livid, saucer-like eyes and gaping mouth -

"Captain!" cries someone from behind him. "What do we do? Stay together? Scatter?"

Their massive footsteps eat the ground in enormous strides, they're closing in, so, so fast -

" _Captain!_ "

"Hold your ground," he grits out. "Wait for my signal."

Someone hiccups in terror.

He turns and surveys his soldiers; their expressions range from scared witless to frantically courageous. All of them have eyes only for the approaching Titans.

Except for one.

He feels the weight of a gaze fixed on his and he finds it in the space of a breath.

It's a woman.

Their eyes lock. She is small, but not scrawny - stockier and stronger in stature than what his mind expects. And her young, feminine face is set in hard lines, bracketed by a clenched jaw and a brow stiffened by determination and fear. But she, unlike all of her peers, does not look into the paralyzing source of her terror.

The expression wavers for the briefest instant when she recognizes who is looking back at her. He doesn't make the effort to recall her name.

For now.

He grants her a single, stiff nod, then turns away to face hell once again.

The lead Titan charges onto Main Street, barreling straight through the corner of a building, sending shredded wood and nails flying. Behind Levi, the handful of other squad leaders shout at their men to be still, to wait -

Three -

The other Titans come barreling into view -

Two -

There's over half a dozen twelve-meters on the heels of the fourteen-meter, blundering straight for Levi, standing at the point of the patrol formation, swords at the ready, alone -

Levi curses.

One -

" _Captain!_ "

"All together!" he barks -

The head Titan hurtles at Levi head-on, spindly arms outstretched, towering lengths upon lengths above his head. Levi raises his swords, chest open, like he's going to receive it into himself-

With a jerk, his grappling hooks find the side of the neck, and for an instant, he feels the monster's colossal weight in heavy, all-powerful juxtaposition with his own, like the weight of a massive ball and chain, dragging him, pulling on him, like half a moment's fleeting game of tug-of-war -

The world falls away into noise. Screams and crashing footsteps and shattering wood and tile. A blur of walls of flesh and whipping cloaks, the glint of metal.

 _He hopes the girl survives._

Levi forgets it all, and is airborne.

* * *

The chaos is unprecedented.

It's rather disappointing how a single cluster of twelve-meters can scatter an entire patrol like ninepins. Four squads - well over thirty soldiers - now lie in hopeless disarray, some obviously hiding until the coast is clear, some making a break for the advance party kilometers beyond the borders of the abandoned town. Them, Levi can't quite blame. It _was_ the objective, after all.

But somebody needs to kill _something_ here, or no one's going to be left by nightfall.

He cries out on Number Four, using every last centimeter of torque his body possesses from his ears to his knees to force his dull blades through its neck deeply enough. The effort interferes with his momentum, and with his arms half-numb and screaming, his lines go slack.

Falling is much faster than flying.

Gritting his teeth, he lands on a shoulder blade, where the skin gives weirdly under his feet and makes him slip onto all fours, and he holds onto what flesh and hair he can grab as the pit of his stomach drops in freefall and is sucked out through the top of his head.

Wind stings his face. The horizon heels. He rides the falling Titan to the ground, senses the approaching impact - at the last moment, he tears his grappling hooks free and springs from the fleshy shoulder just as the overwhleming _crash_ shakes the nearest buildings to their foundations. He tucks into a roll, hits the streets hard, and comes up on his feet with pain thumping through him. The concussion of the impact catches up with him; a cloud of dust blows into him from behind, tosses his cloak, wedges its fibers full of dirt, and he snorts in disgust, then shucks his useless blades with a twist of his lips. He'd meant to make each set last as long as possible; he knows he's in for the long haul today.

Deep, rocking concussions thud hard through the street, reaching Levi through the soles of his boots, tremors shaking up his legs, into his shoulders. He scowls, locks fresh blades into the sword handles, aims, and launches his lines. They shoot into the dilapidated roof of what was once a general store; he puts on the gas and he's yanked into the air by the waist.

At the height of his launch, where the rooftops break away and the sky opens wide to meet him, he has a fitting moment of clarity.

Two more fourteen-meters at three o'clock; three soldiers are already swinging from their shoulders like flies on threadlike leashes, along with two members of Levi's squad. _Good_.

And at nine o'clock -

A measly three-meter, movingly slowly but heavily - hunching over, intent on something on the ground below it -

Gravity seizes him, and it's out of Levi's line of sight in a flash. His boots strike roof tiles, and he's already running.

* * *

It's a soldier. A very dead one.

But that, of course, isn't what's drawing the small fry's attention.

Erwin had asked Levi to lead his current, ragtag squad last-minute. A lighthearted little jaunt on the heels of an advance party sojourning beyond the Wall, just to make sure the supply line didn't get trashed by _complications_ (again). As such, Levi doesn't know any of his soldiers personally.

But he recognizes the girl immediately.

She stands over the dead man's prone body, legs apart and blades drawn, chin defiantly raised, teeth bared mid-snarl, eyes flashing. Her hair is autumn-colored and straggled over her green cloak, crusted with someone's blood.

Ral, he finally remembers in a rush. Two kills and fifteen assists. An as-yet young military career, bare weeks out of training.

Her 3-D Maneuver Gear lies in a broken pile a ways behind her - almost certainly the work of a larger class of monster with unfortunate timing. She's completely grounded.

And the three-meter is bearing down on her, all stupid, slack jaw and wide, importuning eyes.

He raises his swords, angles his body to launch his lines -

\- and it's Ral who charges.

She hollers in the way that soldiers do to shed their own terror and sprints past the Titan too fast for it to realize what's happening; the street is so, so narrow and Levi is sure that she's just trapped herself, sealed her own fate -

Behind the Titan, Ral leaps powerfully, kicks off the wall, gains height, twists in midair, swords high over her head -

\- there's a flash of her green cloak, snapping in the air around her, silver wings blazing -

Levi stares, thunderstruck -

\- and she screams and brings the blades down, shearing twin, interlocking crevasses into the Titan's body, nape to waist.

She hits the ground in a heap and scrambles away; the Titan sways and crashes to earth, spraying gore.

 _Three_ kills.

\- Levi lets out the breath he didn't know he'd been holding.

* * *

"Cadet!"

She looks up, startled, then shoots to her feet, fist thumping into her heart the instant Levi's boots hit the street.

"Captain Levi, SIR!" she cries, eyes wide. She's still breathing like she's just scaled a mountain.

Taking down a Titan practically with your bare hands will do that to you.

He pauses to let his grappling hooks snick neatly back into the launchers at his hips, then strides up to her, stopping close enough to see the way her veins can't seem to decide where to channel her blood, her complexion going waxen and florid in rapid turns at his sudden approach.

They stare at each other, Levi's gaze as dull and disinterested as he can make it, hers wide and forcibly unwavering.

It's probably going to be a while before the image of her leaves his head - her slight frame towering in rage, eyes burning.

It's annoying.

"That was some show, Cadet," he grunts.

"Th-thank you, sir!"

His eyes go somehow narrower - a skill honed with practice. "You going to put your life on the line for every dead body you see?"

She flushes instantly, like a struck match, and breaks their staredown to turn and look at the fallen man, arranged so neatly there in the dust, like she'd carefully put every broken limb and joint in its place. "He wasn't dead when I got here," she whispers.

Something twists in Levi's chest. He lets himself study her a moment longer, and then he looks at the soldier, too, whom neither apathy nor concern can serve anymore. He can guess what Ral must be thinking, though - who he was to humanity, the life cut short that he should have been given the opportunity to complete, the brothers, sisters, parents, friends, lovers he must have had.

Levi dwells on none of those things, and never does. But he _does_ wonder where Ral belongs in that list.

"Did you know him?" he asks. The edge is gone from his voice, annoyance releasing its hold on his gut.

She shakes her head and bites her lip. "No, sir."

And he's baffled once again - at a soldier who will sacrifice herself for a dying man she doesn't even know. And it sparks his ire, returning like a boomerang, frustration clawing up his throat.

The pointless loss of another life. Narrowly averted.

"You want to get out of here, soldier?" he demands.

She ducks her chin. Her gaze finds the ground. It's such a far cry from the woman who had just torn a Titan to shreds with her own hands, it leaves him feeling weirdly unanchored.

Her voice comes out unexpectedly strong, but sliced through with a waver. "Yes, sir."

On the wind, the cries of Scouts find them. Ral's head snaps around to face the sound.

No time for further lecturing.

Before he can say a thing, Ral breaks her salute and scrambles to pick up her dropped blades. But then, she turns on him again, voice frantic. "Sir - um, in the fight earlier, my gear -"

Levi jerks his head in the dead soldier's direction. "Take his."

Ral stares at him, horrified.

He chooses to ignore her and, because time is short, he crosses the street himself to the soldier's body, bends, and starts unbuckling straps.

Levi doesn't know how many missions are under Ral's belt, and even for him, he gets the feeling that this lesson is cracking down with unusual harshness. But for humanity's strongest soldier, he figures he wouldn't have it any other way.

After a moment, Ral joins him, and her shaking hands join his in undoing the dead soldier's harness, working to free his 3-D Maneuver Gear. The twin machines come free shortly, and while Ral hesitates to refit the harness to her own frame and load up on the man's unused blades, Levi stands.

"Arm yourself, Cadet," he says shortly, arching his brows at her below him. The only soldier who could shun her own fear and look at him with such sudden, unbridled trust on a now-distant rooftop. "You're coming with me."


End file.
